


at once the gift and the torment

by theviolonist



Category: Stoker (2013)
Genre: Character Study, Correspondence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 08:46:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>India writes Charlie letters from the road after the end of the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	at once the gift and the torment

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Louise Glück's poem 'Harvest', from her book _The Wild Iris_ ; quote in iv. from Bram Stoker's _Dracula_. Here is [the gun](http://pimpingweapons.tumblr.com/image/51170124154).

_I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other._

\- Mary Shelley, "Frankenstein"

 

i.

[A first letter from Kansas City, Kansas, two weeks after India left the house.]

Dear Uncle Charlie, 

I hope you're well. The summer makes me tremendously sad: all the flowers in this dreary state have wilted and faded, and lost their vivid hues. Fortunately I have learnt new ways to summon color, thanks to you. 

After the sun has gone away, I will visit all the places you lied about. I am sure you would have liked to see them, and now that I am free I feel I owe it to you to travel. You will be happy to hear that I killed not only the sheriff but also two little children, a girl and a boy, who were running along the road. Someone should have told them how dangerous walking so close to traffic is.

At the moment I'm very tired, and don't do much with my days except lie around and think of you; I will get some ice-cream and return to this letter later. 

With love, 

Your [several words, all scribbled over],  
India Stoker.

 

ii. 

[The second letter only three days after, this time from Oklahoma.]

Dear Uncle Charlie, 

As you can see, I didn't complete my last letter. I am very sorry. As you know, I am of fragile health, though I never got ill as a child.

I went to church this morning, to laugh at God. I have been rescued, Uncle Charlie, by no other than myself, and I am a wonderful savior. Some mornings when I wake up I think I could walk on water, if I wanted to, but I have other, more important goals.

I do wonder what you saw in Mother. I always thought her so plain, so bland with her petty envy and her earthly considerations. Did you know that when I was seven, I started playing the violin, and she made me stop when I got too talented? She wanted to be a ballerina, you see. But she didn't have the feet for it. 

But I digress. The heat has fallen; the nights are stark and cold, and I find myself missing your embrace, at times. As soon as the spring comes back --

The next time I write you there will be an ocean between us. How lovely. 

With love, 

Yours,  
India Stoker. 

p.s.: I never thanked you for the belt. 

 

iii. 

[The third letter written from the _Napoleon_ on the Atlantic Ocean and posted a week later from Florence, Italy. The paper smells like perfume and saltwater.]

Dear Uncle Charlie, 

Have you ever thought what it would be like to fall from a flight of stairs? I have. It must be exhilarating, I think; to see whir around you a myriad of shoes and the sharp angles of the stairs, to be able, in a flash, to grasp on an ankle... Spineless, we would be like marionettes, free to twist and bend whichever way we please. Besides, is there anything closer to freedom than death?

I tasted blood four days ago. I didn't intend to; I was pulling my gloves off with my teeth and it happened that there was some left there. I was disappointed: I didn't really like it. Still, it tastes better than that orange and chocolate cake Mother used to make, back when she wasn't so pathetic. Have you ever thought of flavors less well-suited for each other than those two? 

I'll come back and kill her one day, Charlie. I'll dedicate it to you. Then I will run with your ghost up to the lake, the one where my father and I used to kill birds. I would've shown them to you, but Mother burned them all the day after my father died. I don't think even you could make flowers grow there, on the charred ground.

You were right about Florence, Uncle Charlie. I love it here already. The people are wonderfully helpful and the slightest bit savage, which I suppose is a European thing.

With love, 

Yours,  
India Stoker. 

 

iv. 

[A postcard from Paris, a mere five days later. It's an old postcard in black and white, showing the gates of the Louvre, closed. The only words on it, written in neat, sharp cursive on the back: "I am all in a sea of wonders."]

 

v.

[The fourth letter from Tokyo, Japan. Sent with, enclosed, a dried and pressed cherry blossom.]

Dear Uncle Charlie, 

My father used to say that sometimes you have to do something bad, so as not to do something worse. He said this with his face shielded by weeds, and his gun aimed; a few seconds later the bird flew and my bullet hit it, right in the heart, I believe. I thought about this quite a lot, and I'm not sure it's true. The world is a chalice for our impulses. There is something beautiful to the animal in us - only one of the many facets of the human psyche. But I still have so much to learn, don't I? 

I like to think that death is not an ending, but rather an opportunity for blossoming. Around the grave I fashioned for you, made of rough stone and dust I raked with my fingers, you will grow in a burst of lilies, hydrangeas, wild aster and chicory, bright yellow tulips; they will bear your soul back to the sun, where you belong. You used to stand outside, and your eyes through your sunglasses would pierce my veneer - do you remember? 

No, death is not an ending. After all I died too, once, and look at me: now I am reborn, and clothed with my mother's blouse, my father's belt, and shoes which are from you, my uncle, Charlie.

With love, 

Yours,  
India Stoker. 

 

vi.

[A fifth letter from Nüremberg, Germany, months after the last one. It is hurried, almost illegible, as though the writer had been agitated. After weeks of carrying it in her pocket, India rips it to shreds and drops them in the Pegnitz.]

Dear Uncle Charlie, 

You told me once of the blood that runs between us, which bears such vivid blessings. I've been thinking lately of my own daughter, and I'm sad that she won't get to know you like I did, on the wrong end of a hunting rifle. We had good times together, didn't we? 

Heaven, or so I heard, is a vineyard. Are you there - is hell a dense, mythical jungle, or have you escaped by a backdoor once again, and are now only waiting to reappear, grinning like a devil, on my front door? 

I will be gone from this city by the morning. I don't like German. Italian was like honey on the tongue, golden sunlight, but this hurts my palate and makes me sick. I wander for long hours in the anonymous streets. I don't like to feel melancholy; triumph suits me much better. 

Yours,  
India Stoker.

 

vii.

[The sixth letter from Ísafjörður, Iceland.]

Dear Uncle Charlie, 

I wish you were with me. Everything here is clear and stark; blood forms such delicate china patterns on snow, did you know? I am in love with everything, all at once, but I still love you above all, with the fierceness one keeps only for memories. 

Yesterday afternoon I bought a bunch of white lilies, nerved with pink. I'm afraid my landlady's cat ate one of them and was found dead on her doorstep that same evening; fortunately there is a freezer in the basement and I am sure she and her cat will be very happy there. (It was a beautiful specimen, white as snow.)

There are two faces in the lines of my hand, Uncle Charlie: I am dual, fragmented, but I don't bow my head anymore and the clicking of my heels alerts my victims before they can even see me. There is no good and no wrong; I do only what sings in my blood, and I am the result of something ancient and beautiful, in which I have but little part. 

I do love you.

Yours,  
India Stoker. 

 

viii.

[The seventh letter written sprawled belly-down on a salmon-coloured bed, entirely naked, in Helsinki, Finland. The writing looks adult, slightly lazy.]

Dear Uncle Charlie, 

You would have loved the sea. She's enormous and unrelenting, with a bosom wide like a mother's, the mother I never had; she swallows with long blue shivers, and tidal waves green as jade. Like you and me she has many faces, she can be in turn motherly, fanged, and cajoling. Have you ever stood leaning above a swelling sea, with a salt-tasting mouth, and longed to jump? 

I am anew in this world; the only thing I regret is not taking that piano with me. Etched into the wood I left -- but that doesn't matter now. 

With love, 

Yours,  
India Stoker. 

 

ix.

[The eighth letter, or rather a note, scribbled in red biro on the back of a receipt for a custom engraved and gold inlaid Smith & Wesson pre-'27 double action revolver.]

Dear Uncle Charlie, 

Sometimes I dream I am your daughter. 

p.s.: Did you know that lilies only live one to two weeks? 

 

x. 

India always sends the letters. The dead are careful, and quick to hold a grudge - or so is her understanding. Someone, perhaps the new maid, perhaps her mother, collects them in the mailbox, from which the paint is starting to peel, and stuffs them without opening them in a shoebox, where on the side is written, in a child's hand: 'India, 18.'


End file.
